Dear Convener,
Subject: Housing (Scotland) Bill
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (the Commission) welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee’s call for views on the Housing (Scotland) Bill.
We previously raised specific housing issues faced by disabled people in our response to the Scottish Government’s Housing to 2040 consultation in February 2020, which was largely based on our Housing and disabled people: Scotland’s hidden crisis 2018 report. We also responded to the Scottish Government’s consultation on the New Deal for Tenants draft strategy, and the consultation on proposals for new prevention of homelessness duties. We consider many of the recommendations we made in these responses to be applicable to the consideration of this Bill.
We have summarised a few of our main recommendations below but would direct the Committee to our full responses as they consider the Bill.
Availability of accessible housing
While recognising that the draft legislation does not currently contain house-building provisions, we continue to recommend that the Scottish Government legislate to require all local authorities to ensure that a minimum of 10 per cent of new-build homes across all tenure types are built to a wheelchair-accessible standard, and that this should be monitored and reviewed.
Adaptations
Our 2018 report also detailed that disabled people reported their reluctance to ask private landlords for adaptations. For this reason, we welcome provisions to more easily enable private tenants to make changes to their property. However, we continue to recommend that the Scottish Government review the Scheme of Assistance funding and guidance, in order to ensure consistency of outcomes, good practice and equal rights for disabled people.
Homelessness
‘Is Scotland Fairer?’, our 2023 state of the nation report on equality and human rights, set out that certain protected characteristic groups are overrepresented in homelessness applications.
In our response to the Scottish Government’s consultation on proposals for new prevention of homelessness duties, we set out that there is an opportunity when creating these new duties for the Scottish Government to explicitly highlight the need for relevant public bodies to comply with their duties under the Public Sector Equality Duty and Fairer Scotland Duty and ensure that their decision-making takes account, and meets the needs, of people sharing different protected characteristics.
We would be happy to discuss this or our previous related responses further with the Committee at any time.
Yours sincerely,
John Wilkes
Head of Scotland
